The present invention relates to a CRT composite image printing method and apparatus for making a print of a composite image comprising a human figure and personal data, and more particularly to a CRT composite image printing method and apparatus which is suitable for a photo identity card manufacture system.
In recent years, there have been numerous kinds of personal cards such as identification (ID) cards, driving licenses, credit cards, bank cards, oil company cards, a commutation and season tickets and so on. Some of these cards are essential in particular to prove the cardholder's identity; for example an ID card such as an employee ID card, a driver's license and so on, are provided with a picture of the face of the cardholder as well as personal data including the name, date of birth, address, etc.
As the card with a picture of a face, there is known a card comprising a blank sheet or core sheet and cover sheets attached thereto. On the blank sheet there are pre-printed captions for personal data. Having entered the necessary personal data with the aid of a typewriter and having then attached a picture of the face thereto, the core sheet is sandwiched between the cover sheets and pressure-welded to the cover sheets with heat.
The card thus made has a difference in sheet level at the edges of the picture. In order to avoid this difference, it is known to provide an opening in the core sheet in which the picture is fitted.
The cards made in this way suffer from the risk of being possibly altered by replacing the picture. For the prevention of the replacement of pictures, it is known to provide a print of a blank card which has a portion of the picture of the face attached thereto, but no personal data. The print, after having attached a label with the personal data separately provided, is also sandwiched between the cover sheets.
Otherwise, a blank sheet on which the personal data have already been typewritten or entered otherwise is set in a camera. Upon taking a picture of the human face, the images of the blank sheet and the human face are formed on a reversal color printing paper simultaneously and compositely, but by different taking lenses.
Either technique described above raises the problems that the production of the card with a picture is costly in labor and time and that wrong combinations of pictures and personal data can be made, particularly when a large number of cards are required to be made at a time.
Another problem is in the renewal of cards. When making a new personal card at the expiration of an existing card, although it would suffice to replace only the picture on the card with a recent one because there is usually no change in personal data, nevertheless it is necessary to enter the same data as in the existing card on a new blank sheet. This means that a new personal card has to be made at the expiration of every existing pesonal card.
On the other hand, a recent tendency in personal cards is toward color cards. For providing color personal cards with a high quality, it is known to use a CRT image printing apparatus which cooperates with a black-and-white CRT and three color filters, namely, blue, green and red. In the CRT image printing apparatus there is sequentially displayed in a brightness pattern on the screen of the black-and-white CRT, three black-and-white images corresponding to blue, green and red images in this order. Upon exposure, the color filters are selectively correspondingly used to translate the black-and-white images to the three primary color images for multiple exposure.
In the CRT image printing apparatus, in order to obtain a desirable exposure density of print, it suffices to provide only several seconds of exposure for each of the blue and green images; however hundreds of seconds of exposure is required for red. Therefore, the CRT image printing apparatus operates inefficiently, in particular when a large number of color cards such as company ID cards, etc. are required to be made at a time. From the results of various investigations, it was found by the present inventor that the time-consuming exposure for red was due to a low emission luminance (radiation energy) of the black-and-white CRT in the range of wavelengths of red and a low sensitivity of color photographic or printing paper to the range of wavelengths of red.
Usual black-and-white CRTs contain a fluorescent substance, P45 in E I A system which is composed of Y.sub.2 O.sub.2 S and Tb. The fluorescent substance P45, as shown in FIG. 1, has a spectral luminance characteristic having a maximum radiation peak at about 540 nm and which is mostly comprised of wavelengths shorter than about 600 nm.
On the other hand, usual color printing papers have a spectral sensitivity distribution as shown in FIG. 2 wherein the red light-sensitive layer is considerably lower in sensitivity than the blue light-sensitive layer. For example, the density value is 1.2 for the blue light-sensitive layer, 0.17 for the green light-sensitive layer and 0.023 for the red light-sensitive layer when exposing a color printing paper to a white light. For this reason, it is necessary to expose the color printing paper to a red image on the black-and-white CRT for hundreds of seconds.